LITMIR.BIZ

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      Drover looked up in the trees and rolled his eyes. “I don’t hear any . . .” And right then he heard the roar. His eyes got as big as saucers and he started to shiver. “What is it, Hank?”

      “I don’t know, but we’re fixing to find out. I’ve got a hunch that it’s a silver monster bird.”

      I turned my head just for a second, and when I looked back, Drover was gone. At first I thought he might have headed for the machine shed, but then I saw his gunnysack quivering.

      “Get out from under there! We’ve got work to do. I’m putting this ranch under Red Alert.”

      “But Hank, that thing roars!”

      The roar was getting louder all the time. “Come on, son, it’s time for battle stations. If that bird lands, it’s liable to be a fight to the death.”

      “But Hank, I . . . my foot hurts and I got a headache.”

      I took a corner of his gunnysack in my teeth and jerked it away. And there was Drover, my assistant Head of Ranch Security, quivering like a tub full of raw liver. “Get up and stay behind me. This ain’t drill. This is Red Alert.”

      “Okay, Hank, I’ll try but . . . Red Alert’s pretty serious, isn’t it . . . oh, my foot hurts!”

      I took the lead and went streaking out into the pasture south of the house. I headed straight to the big dead cottonwood between the house and the creek and set up a forward position. I could see him now, coming in low over the hills and heading straight toward us.

      It was a silver monster bird, all right, one of the biggest I’d ever seen. He had his big droopy wings out and his eyes were going back and forth across the ground. He was looking for something to swoop down on and kill. I could see that right off. I mean, if you’ve seen as many of these monster birds as I have, you sort of learn to read their thoughts.

      This one had murder on his mind.

      “Okay, Drover, listen up. I don’t want to repeat myself. We’ve got steers in this home pasture. That’s what the monster bird’s after, them steers. He’s gonna try to swoop down and pick up a steer and fly off with him.”

      Drover’s teeth were chattering. “A whole steer!”

      “Yes sir. They dive down and snatch ’em up and eat ’em in the air, and I mean bones and hair and teeth, ears, tail, everything. It’s our job to keep him from doing that.”

      “What would he do . . . if he caught a dog instead of a steer?”

      “We don’t have an answer to that question.”

      “I . . . I’d kind of like to know before we do anything radical.”

      “Use your imagination.”

      “My leg hurts, Hank. I think I better . . .”

      “Stand your ground and listen. When I count to three, we’ll go over the top and let him have it. Don’t save anything back. If he comes in low enough, we’ll try to grab him.

      “Grab him! But Hank, what would we do with him?”

      I studied on that for a second. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I guess just bite and scratch and fight for your life. You ready?”

      “No.”

      “Well, ready or not, this is it—combat, Red Alert.” I peeked over the top of the log. He was heading straight toward us.

      “Oh my gosh, Hank, look how big he is, and his eyes, and his wings are smoking!”

      “One!”

      “Hank, my leg . . .”

      “Two!”

      “. . . is killing me.”

      “Three! Attack, Drover! Charge! Bonsai!”

      I leaped over the dead tree and threw myself into the monster bird’s path. It was him or me. I bared my fangs and set up a ferocious bark, probably the ferociousest bark I ever made.

      The roar was deafening. I mean, it shook the ground. Never heard anything quite so loud or frightful in all my career. No ordinary dog could have stood his ground against that thing.

      He kept coming, so I leaped into the air and snapped at him. Another foot or two and I might have put a fang-lock on him, but when he saw my teeth coming at him, he made the only sensible decision and quit the country.

      I mean, he pointed himself north and evacuated, and he never looked back. The smoke and roar faded into the distance.

      “And don’t you ever try that again!” I yelled at him as he went past. “Next time, you won’t get off so easy.”

      I turned to Drover. He was lying flat on the ground with his paws over his ears. His eyes were shut tight. He wouldn’t get no medals for bravery, but at least he hadn’t run.

      “Okay, Drover, you can come out now.”

      “Are we dead?”

      “Nope. Against near impossible odds, we just whipped a silver monster bird.”

      Drover cracked his eyes, looked around in a full circle, and sat up. “How bad was it?”

      “How bad? Almost beyond description, Drover. When he had me in his claws . . .”

      “He had you in his claws, no fooling?”

      “You didn’t see it? Yup, he had these enormous claws with big hooks on the end, and he reached down and grabbed me.”

      “What did you do?”

      “What did I do? Well, I called on an old trick that my granddaddy once told me about. I tore off his whole leg and left him with a bloody stump.”

      “You did?”

      “Certainly did. Why do you think he flew away in such a hurry? I mean, that bird was scared when he left out of here, and I have my doubts that we’ll ever see him again.”

      Drover looked around. “Where’s the leg?”

      “Oh, it’s around here somewhere. We’ll run into it one of these days. Can’t miss it. Heck, it was almost as big as this tree.”

      “You want me to look for it?”

      “Not now. I don’t know about you, Drover, but I’m ready to shower out and shut her down for a few hours. I think we’ve earned ourselves some sleep.”

      And with that, we headed for our favorite spot on the ranch, the place just west of the house where the septic tank overflows and forms a beautiful pool of green water.

      Chapter Two: Egged On by Pete

      In the security business, you learn to live your life a day at a time because you never know if you’ll make it past that next monster. Any one of them is liable to be your last.

      A lot of dogs can’t handle that kind of pressure, but there’s others of us who kind of thrive on danger. When you’re in that category, you learn to savor the precious moments. I mean the little things that most dogs take for granted.

      Like a roll in the sewer after a big battle. There’s nothing quite like it, believe me. You come in hot and bloody and tore up and wore out, proud of yourself on the one hand but just derned near exhausted on the other hand, and you walk up to that pool of lovely green water and . . . well, it’s hard to describe the wonderfulness of it.

      That first plunge is probably the best, when you step in and plop down and feel the water moving

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